Fate & Water Fights
Bobby was on his tippy-toes and suddenly the branch was within reach. And even more suddenly his fingers were covered in sap. It wasn’t comfortable, his grip on the bark, arms flexing golf-ball sized biceps and legs wrapped around the trunk, but he seemed to be finding his place on the tree.
“Climb, lover boy,” said Strunk.
“Lover boy?” said Bobby.
“Lover boy,” said Strunk.
Strunk was Bobby’s next-door neighbor. He was Bobby’s best friend. Strunk was older too, which, to Bobby, meant more mature. And more mature meant smarter so Bobby trusted Strunk’s decisions in water-gun fights.
Bobby pulled himself up. With his torso elevated, Bobby swung his legs onto a wide branch and peered out. He pretended to peer out looking for the enemy water-ballooners. Really, his eyes were directed to the base of the tree. He would be dead meat if he lost the origami fortune-teller Stacy had made him.
“I see them, over by the playground next to—”
At the sight of her house Bobby paused. He formed a plan and added quickly, “that girl’s house. Head out. Let’s cut them off.”
“You mean Stacy’s house?” Strunk asked, laughing. “Yeah, wait for my cue.”
They both laughed.
“Your cue?”
Bobby tried to sound like he was pleading on purpose, like he was challenging Strunk’s authority. That way, he could ensure that Strunk would leave him and go complete their ambush.
Bobby watched as Strunk bent to tie his shoe and crept off slowly, his shadow disappearing into the thicket. As he searched below Bobby thought about his friends, Strunk and Stacy; he knew that what little popularity he had in the fifth grade was now at stake.
The lamp on the corner of the street could have provided more light; its shadow hardly cast over the battlefield. Stacy’s yard, the four trees, row of bushes, and wire fence seemed to loom at Bobby. Left alone in the dark high up in his tree would have been peaceful if he wasn’t panicking about his fortune-teller. Stacy said she would actually kiss him in front of everyone if he ever lost it.
Nevertheless, it had made him feel like the hero of a war movie—stashing his girlfriend’s letter in his cargo shorts pocket and pulling it out during hard times when he needed inspiration. Yeah, there were hard times in water-gun battles. And no, she wasn’t really his girlfriend.
Bobby even knew which of the colors to pick on the outside and which of the numbers to pick on the inside so that after rotating and opening the fold, he’d receive the one of the eight fortunes he always liked best: if you finally call your friend who’s a girl your girlfriend, she’ll kiss you on the lips.
But it had all started with the crickets, the stupid crickets and insects and creatures of the forest. They’d begun making strange noises, sudden strange noises, which put Bobby on the edge of his branch. One grasshopper chirp, a too-sudden-chirp, made him jump and sent Stacy’s fortune-teller falling to the ground.
He’d already been nervous thinking about kissing, and girlfriends, and kissing girls who were friends, that he didn’t notice his grip tighten on the tree and his hands sweating. Growing weary, he had wiped his hands on his shorts and, in doing so, brushed the fortune-teller off his leg. Down it had fallen, half-floating and half-spiraling, knocking lightly against the tree and finally landing next to the trunk; next to Strunk.
But Strunk was gone now, so Bobby quickly began to climb down, making a mental note that he wouldn’t tell Stacy he almost lost the fortune-teller. If, of course, he ever managed to get down there and retrieve it.
That’s when he heard the sound of voices nearby, and cursed how quickly their battle plan had formed into action. And quickly, he retreated back up to a safe height in the tree.
“This is stupid. I don’t know why he wouldn’t tell us-”
“Just be quiet and follow me-”
“No. I’m going this way.”
“He said we’re supposed to stay together!”
Their footsteps had stopped in the midst of the argument. They found Stacy’s fortune-teller, Bobby knew it. His life was over. Dead meat.
Bobby thought his life had always been defined by the worst-timed mistakes. Like the guys in movies who miraculously discover powers they never knew they had. What if, Bobby thought, a stranger appeared out of thin air and told him he could fly like superman down to grab the fortune-teller, or he could have a go-go-gadget arm to retrieve it. The stranger would be someone like Morgan Freeman who’d offer him one of these special powers. The power would, of course, cost him something in return but right now that was a deal he’d take, gladly.
A shadow moved about three trees away but his Super soaker wouldn’t reach that far. He thought he’d distract them, at least, and threw an acorn toward a tree beside him. Except the acorn got stuck in his sappy hand and cracked at the bottom of Bobby’s own tree.
One of the two boys below panicked at hearing the acorn, and took off running. The other panicked just the same, only with the opposite reaction. He stood frozen to the spot, neck and shoulders stiff like maybe remaining still would somehow make him invisible.
Slowly, Bobby set his Super-soaker between two branches and pulled a water balloon from his pocket. Bobby held it with a loose grip behind his back like a pitcher on the mound. This time, in the non-sap covered hand.
“It’s all about how you hold the ball,” Bobby’s father had said. “A hard grip doesn’t mean you’ll throw breakneck speeds but a relaxed grip does mean you’ll be more accurate. Just grip it light and naturally.”
That was advice for throwing a baseball but it seemed appropriate for throwing a water-balloon too, so he followed it. He wound up.
Splash!
A balloon broke over the kid’s left shoulder. Only it came from Strunk’s hand instead of Bobby’s. Because when Bobby was about to let his balloon fly, and looked down, all he saw was the boy running away. He followed the boy and his eyes made their way over to the other side of the street, where he found Strunk lying in a bush. Strunk was giving him the thumbs-up, and waving him to come down, and fast.
But Bobby had never been to that side of the neighborhood, never dared go near Old Man Marley’s perfectly trimmed bushes. It was scary like Home Alone over there, which, it occurred to Bobby, was probably why Strunk thought it a better place to hide than Stacy’s house.
Bobby ran over to a tall, wooden fence. His adrenaline was pumping and all he noticed was the small tree beside the fence where, he calculated, he could hoist himself up and leap into the yard. He hadn’t noticed that it was a weak branch, or foreseen that he would only clear the fence a split-second after the branch snapped in two. It was a much longer way down than he thought and when he landed, Bobby fell forward and cut his arm on a small pebble, or rock rather.
From the grass he scanned the area quickly, distracted from the pain by what he saw in his peripherals. A light turned on in the house. Bobby was lying on his stomach but he ducked at the light anyway, and looked up to the second story bedroom to where it was coming from. Then a beam of light blinded him. He dove behind a woodpile beside the fence, too suddenly, fitting his body snugly between the two.
He’d done well to forget the pain in his arm but against the splintered surface of the wood there was no denying it. Alone behind the stack, he cried. For the briefest second he wanted to go home, have his mother bandage his wound, make him a peanut butter and jelly, and be done with the water gun fight. His stomach was aching and his arm throbbed.
So he wiped his eyes and shrugged it off.
He couldn’t act like that anymore. He was older now, more mature, and wanted to act like Strunk did when he cut his arm or fell down from a tree. Although, he hadn’t ever seen Strunk cut his arm. Or fall from a tree.
Sitting there Bobby faced what had to be the neighborhood’s largest wooden deck. It was two stories of wooden railing, gleaming in the dark; his escape route. Strunk had always told him the first thing to do in any new place was find an “out.” The cardinal rule was not to get caught in a pickle.
A dark shape moved into the window light, extinguishing Bobby’s view of the deck.
Bobby ducked at first, and noticed it was only a young girl. There was a doll in her hand and her arm was swooping down. He looked up at her, fascinated that she could be so consumed by something that was really only part of her imagination. She brought the doll to life with every swoop. Her thoughts seemed to revolve around the doll.
Bobby hoped he was never like that as a kid. And he felt inadequate. The girl and the doll and the girl’s blonde hair reminded him of Stacy, reminded him of the fortune teller.
The fortune-teller. Dead meat. Stacy was going to kill him. She was going to kiss him and thus, kill him. And the entire fifth grade would see.
Bobby stared wide-eyed in disbelief and shook his fist. He must’ve forgotten to grab it when he saw Strunk motioning him down. He had to get out of there, now, before it was opened by the wrong hands.
But before he could even move, the back door to the house creaked open. Bobby sat paralyzed, his eyes closed, just listening for that long moment. There was the rattle of a dog collar, a door creaking closed, and rapid sniffing. He peeked out and watched the dog find a place to pee beside the flowers. It was a German Sheppard, a couple months old maybe, he thought. Strunk had a one-year-old Sheppard that was only slightly bigger, and it was fun to wrestle- the big dogs always were. Except Strunk’s dog knew him, and knew not to bite his head off. This German-Sheppard didn’t look like it wanted a friendly wrestling match.
When this Sheppard finishing peeing, when it finished wheeling its head around to look Bobby straight in the face, it looked only curious and ready to pounce. The Sheppard had hardly kicked back its hind legs when it turned and looked Bobby in the eyes. It lurched forward at him and stopped, ready, transforming Bobby into Benny Rodriguez of the Sandlot, caught in a standoff with the Beast, a drooling, baseball-eating dog.
Bobby headed to higher ground, climbing the stack of firewood and slipping as pieces of wood gave way and fell to the ground. He knew that any second now Benny’s new shoes-the PF Flyers, guaranteed to make a kid run faster and jump higher, were going to drop out of the sky.
The German-Sheppard barked once, definitively if ever a dog could.
Morgan Freeman did not materialize on the deck, nor was there a profound speech, nor a deal Bobby could make to get the PF Flyers. Instead, there was music. Bobby heard the strum of a guitar in his head, slow at first and building speed, and the low whistling tune of a western showdown. On the side of the yard somewhere was a Popsicle wrapper being blown in the wind.
He ran.
When he reached the edge of the deck, the Beast was at his heels. As he jumped up to the railing of the deck to heave himself up, the dog’s teeth sunk into his dangling shoelace. Adrenaline helped him the rest of the way up, and soon he was hurling through the air into the next yard.
When he hit the ground, he lay still as possible and waited. If there was to be an end to the barking it didn’t seem part of the near future. Bobby ran his hand through his hair like he watched his father do so many times after coming home from a long day at work.
Stacy would always tease him about his hair when they sat together on the bus. Real men didn’t care what their hair looked like, he’d told her. Real men didn’t care if their hands were dirty or their hair wasn’t pretty, his father had said, might as well buzz it all off. But Bobby didn’t want to shave it all off, his baseball hat wouldn’t fit right.
He thought about the day his dad had shaved off all his hair. He’d begun just trimming, of course, and kept trimming until the sides were of even length and by then there wasn’t any hair left. His mother had been out of town then or Bobby would’ve complained to her and avoided the whole fiasco. When she did pull in the driveway, he had run out to the car crying and yelling.
“Oh, quit that racket!” the neighbor yelled, finally tired of the dog. “You’re going to drive the neighbors up a wall!”
Or down a wall, Bobby thought. No more taking chances inside a yard with a closed fence. So he crept slowly around the side of the house and looked into the street for signs of movement. Where was Strunk now, he wondered, and how long had he been trying to find everyone or had they all quit the game or gone inside and left him.
Bobby sprinted across the street and back to the tree where he’d last seen Strunk. He felt eyes suddenly at his back and climbed even more suddenly to the highest point in the tree. The moon, sudden like all else, vanished behind a cloud, making the night wholly darker. Bobby wondered how far everyone was from him.
But then a water-balloon came from the left and hit him square in the shoulder.
“Ooh!”
“He’s in the trees! Let’s get him!”
He’d been spotted and foolishly let out a cry. The balloon did scare Bobby, though. Who could chuck a balloon that hard, he wondered, and where on the ground could it have come from, he couldn’t figure out, and how on earth did it manage to find him, he had no idea. Must’ve been a heat-seeking water-balloon.
Bobby needed a plan. He’d have to move to a new tree. After all, he was the best climber in the neighborhood. He’d never broken a bone so far- he knocked on the tree- so he climbed with confidence, swiftly, from one tree to the next. Below, a voice sang to him.
“Oh who, oh who, has my water-balloon struck now, oh where, oh where, can he be?”
“I shot one over here somewhere,” another voice chimed in, laughing. “I think I heard a girl’s voice.”
“Shut up, stupid, I heard the voice too, sounded like little Bobby McGee. But which tree?”
“I don’t know! It’s dark out...”
Bobby didn’t move a muscle. They were directly under the tree he’d been perched at and fortunately hadn’t heard him jump over to the next one.
“I’ll climb this one and you climb that one,” one whispered to the other.
“But couldn’t we just-”
“We’ve got you cornered!” interrupted the first boy. “Don’t try anything or you’ll get a balloon to the head!” He dulled his voice to a whisper again, “Let’s go.”
They each took a tree, and began to climb the two trees to the right and left of where Bobby was stationed. He waited for them to get high enough into the tree before carefully climbing down from his own. He managed to creep down, down to the final branch he knew was still too high up. He’d have to swing and jump down and when they heard him land he’d have to make a run for it.
When Bobby swung down, when he jumped, and when he hit the ground there was indeed a thud. It sounded almost like jumping on home plate. There was a similar puff and a similar rising cloud of dirt except this landing meant accelerating into a full sprint instead of slowing down and celebrating.
“There he goes!”
“Climb down, fast. Go, go! I’m too high I can’t get down that fast!”
“Me too, I don’t want to fall!”
“He’s getting away! Hurry up!”
When his two enemies finally made it down the tree and sprinted into the street after him, he’d already put three houses distance between them. He found cover at a house with a backyard pool, and not just any pool but a pool with a cover on it. So he jumped onto the cover and laid down flat. Pleased with his escape and amused he’d found cover on a cover, Bobby laughed to himself. He must have lost them, he thought, because everything was silent.
Glancing to his left and right, he realized he had gone full circle and was at the house next to Stacy’s. Ever since he’d been chased out of the tree, he’d only thought about escaping and not about- oh, not again- Stacy’s fortune-teller.
“Dead meat…” Bobby said aloud.
“What’s wrong,” said a familiar voice from behind him, “lover boy?”
He turned abruptly, frightened, only to see Strunk. There was a wide smile growing wider upon his best friend’s face.
“Strunk,” Bobby exclaimed, “Were you trying to scare the crap out of me?”
A second later, Bobby removed himself from the pool cover and stood facing Strunk. And right at that moment, his mother’s voice rang out and scared the crap out of both of them.
“BOBBY!”
“Ouch,” said Strunk, covering his ears.
“Huh?” said a stunned Bobby. He saw in Strunk’s right hand a neatly folded piece of notebook paper with colors written on its four corners.
“BOBBY!”
Bobby’s mother was yelling his name from across the street, which signaled that the game was over and it was time for dinner. But Bobby was still staring at Strunk, knowing he was about to become dead meat. He could still see Strunk’s bright-toothed smile in the night, and tried not to look down at Strunk’s hand or at the fortune-teller. He had to stop wondering how it had fallen into Strunk’s hands, if Strunk would tell, what he would say to Stacy. Maybe if he could pretend like he didn’t see it, Strunk wouldn’t say anything.
“Coming?” Bobby yelled, or tried to yell at least. His lips moved and he pushed a little air out, but the noise that emanated was half a question, half a whisper.
“Stacy is my girlfriend,” Strunk said slowly, emphatically. “Say it.”
Bobby’s face was turning to its shade of bright red. But it wasn’t because he was embarrassed. He had just stopped breathing for the past minute and a half.
“Say it,” Strunk repeated, singing a teasing jingle, “and you’ll get a kiss on the lips.”
Bobby remained still for a moment, wondering how the moment would ever end, wondering why Stacy had to be his girlfriend, why he had to go and drop the fortune-teller in the first place.
“Stacy is my girlfriend,” said Bobby. He looked Strunk in the eye, and saw the split-second of surprise in Strunk’s face; it was all he needed. “Not!”
And Bobby snatched the fortune-teller. He ran away full-speed toward his garage. He was almost surprised as he ran that Strunk hadn’t chased after him or yelled anything back. When he finally reached the step, hit the garage door button, and it began to close, Bobby looked back and saw Strunk standing in the same place. Strunk’s hands were coming together, repeatedly. It was a motion that Bobby couldn’t understand at first because he only seemed to hear his heart beating to the tune. Strunk was clapping.
“See you tomorrow lover boy!” said Strunk.
Bobby turned, the garage door just within his reach, and then he smiled. Stacy was, he knew, going to kiss him in front of everyone. But it was okay, she was his girlfriend.